Animals are known for their heightened senses and quick reflexes. It is axiomatic to the experienced hunter that animals can hear and quickly respond to even the slightest of sounds. The noise associated with the release of a bow and the shooting of an arrow toward an animal may be sufficient to alert the animal to move out of the way of the oncoming arrow.
One approach to quieting a bow is to provide a stabilizer to damp out vibrations in the bow. An example of a stabilizer is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,324,222 to Gasser. Another approach is to provide elastic members each having one end attached to a specific region of the bow string and the other end secured to a respective adjacent limb at a point intermediate the ends of the limb as disclosed in U.S. Pat No. 4,628,892 to Windedahl et al. The use of bow string silencers is also disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,023,551 to Huddleston and U.S. Pat. No. 5,016,604 Tilby. Another approach for eliminating noise and vibration from compound bows involves the use of a fluid filled tube mounted horizontally to the bow body to absorb vibrations as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,411,009 to Thompson et al. Yet another approach involves the use of a cam shield as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,488 to Fenton et al.
In spite of the various approaches available for silencing bows, there is a need for additional innovations in bow design, in particular in the area of compound bows given the complexity of their construction, to provide a quiet design.
The compound bow is generally characterized by the presence of one or more leveraging devices, typically on the distal ends of the bows limbs. The leveraging devices are used to generate a mechanical advantage favoring the archer. As a compound bow is drawn, the force required to displace the bowstring increases rapidly to a maximum value, typically prior to reaching the mid-point of the draw cycle. At some point beyond mid-draw, the force required to displace the bow string an additional amount decreases with each additional increment of displacement. As a result, at full draw the archer is only required to exert a fraction of the maximum force that was required to initially draw the bow.
One of the earliest compound bows is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,486,495 to Allen. Although Allen discloses the use of programmed cams, such cams did not actually appear in the marketplace until the advent of computer numerically controlled (CNC) machinery made them economically feasible to produce and sell.
With the advent of CNC machinery, the state of the art has progressed from circular cam profiles to programmed noncircular profiles that result in the ability to store more energy in the bow and therefore provide more energy to accelerate an arrow to a higher launch velocity.
Improvements in cam design have been accompanied by advances in the design of the cable rigging. Some of the early compound bows had auxiliary intermediate idler pulleys with their anchor cables adjustably fastened to the handle sections of the bows. Typically, such bows had two cam elements each mounted independently and requiring very meticulous adjustments to each to synchronize the action of the two cam elements to achieve optimum performance.
More recent dual cam bows have been rigged such that the anchor cables of one cam were secured to the axle which mounts the opposite cam. This tied the system together and provided a degree of corrective feedback that made it difficult to detect discrepancies in eccentric wheel synchronization.
Unfortunately, however, with the advent of programmed cams that were capable of storing even more energy, the cam synchronization problem reappeared and the problem increased with increases in energy storage capability combined with progressively lower holding weights.
The innovation of the dual feed-out single take-up single cam compound bow, disclosed inter alia, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,368,006 provided a major step forward in the simplification of the compound bow.
The background of compound bow development is well documented in the patents that have been granted in this area and for a deeper understanding of the state of the art one can find additional information in the following patents and the patents which they reference:
U.S Pat. No. Issued To 3,841,295 Hunter 3,854,467 Hofmeister 3,958,551 Ketchum 4,440,142 Simonds 4,838,236 Kudlacek 5,040,520 Nurney 5,307,787 LaBorde et al. 5,368,006 McPherson 5,505,185 Miller 5,678,529 Larson
For the purpose of this disclosure, all U.S. patents and patent applications and all other publications referenced herein are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.